The tedious mediocrity of "hip"

American Digest offers a fine explication of Seattle's self-conscious art and music scene.

I suppose we shouldn't wonder that our political contests have become increasingly infested with the vulgar, the obscene and the downright ugly; the political does not exist in a bubble secure from the influences of culture - a fact that many conservative and centrist politicians, obsessed with the calculus of mere electioneering, have been far too slow to grasp.